midnight undulates like a ghost, 
content to aimlessly wander. 
I sit lamplit at the chamber window 
and conjure poetry from my mind’s theater.

 as my pen sketches the play into words, 
I begin to recognize all of human consciousness 
as the artist’s stealthy tale-telling, 
its iteration of perception into language.

 if only I were a moth beneath this lamp,
writhing present and sensual in its glow, 
dusting the light with the flourish of my wings …

Mmmmm, YES. 

 I envy God’s mindless creatures 
for whom all existence is not a howl,
a frenzied plea
to be wrenched from the doldrums of mind 

Into the euphoria of oblivion.